It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times.

Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals.

Most commit the same mistake with God that they do with their friends: they do all the talking.

Our Lord did not ask us to give up the things of earth, but to exchange them for better things.

The reason we're bored is because we don't love anything.

The industrial and social injustice of our era is the tragic aftermath of democracy's overemphasis on freedom as the "right to do whatever you please." No, freedom means the right to do what you ought, and ought implies law, and law implies justice, and justice implies God. So too in war, a nation that fights for freedom divorced from justice has no right to war, because it does not know why it wants to be free, or why it wants anyone else to be free.

But there was no room at the inn"; the inn is the gathering place of public opinion; so often public opinion locks its doors to the King.